London, Apr 12 : They come really 'handy' when you're at lose of words, or are nervous. But all these 'umms' and 'errs' - the so-called 'fillers' - have seemingly cast a spell on the Britons, for according to a new study, nearly 10 per cent of their speech is wasted on such words.

According to the study, Brits waste more than five hours a year on "basically, um, er, actually, you know" total nonsense.

In an analysis of more than 80 hours of conversations between 150 people it was found that the English people use meaningless words such as "um", and the footballers' favourite "at the end of the day" on average every nine seconds.

"Britain clearly loves to talk but many of us need to re-learn the art of conversation," the Telegraph quoted Phillip Hodson, speech expert and Fellow for the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, as saying.

"Some say that fillers are a sign of intellect, used to consider what to say next. However, research shows that if your speech is full of padding, you're harder to understand, which makes listeners tend to tune out," Hodson added.

ANI